The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
The unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.
It is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there is no
doubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in detail the love
which rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of anguish.
Oh, how great a punishment was there now for those impulses of pride
which had induced Julien to place himself as superior to the Caylus
and the Croisenois! How deeply did he feel his own unhappiness as he
exaggerated to himself their most petty advantages. With what hearty
good faith he despised himself.
Mathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to express his
excessive admiration. As he walked beside her he looked surreptitiously
at her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was so completely
overcome by love and unhappiness as to be on the point of falling at
her feet and crying "pity."
"Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior to
everything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love M. de
Caylus."
Julien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's sincerity,
the accent of truth was only too palpable in everything she said. In
order that nothing might be wanting to complete his unhappiness there
were moments when, as a result of thinking about the sentiments which
she had once experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of
him, as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly put an
inflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished it clearly.
He would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled inside with
molten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of unhappiness how could
the poor boy have guessed that it was simply because she was talking to
him, that mademoiselle de la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling
those weaknesses of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de
Caylus or M. de Luz.
Words fail to express Julien's anguish. He listened to these detailed
confidences of the love she had experienced for others in that very
avenue of pines where he had waited so few days ago for one o'clock
to strike that he might invade her room. No human being can undergo a
greater degree of unhappiness.
This kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days. Mathilde
sometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking to him and sometimes
not to avoid them; and the one topic of conversation to which they both
seemed to revert with a kind of cruel pleasure, was the description of
the sentiments she had felt for others. She told him about the letters
which she had written, she remembered their very words, she recited
whole sentences by heart.
She seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien with a kind
of malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in his pangs.
One sees that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read
any novels. If he had been a little less awkward and he had coolly said
to the young girl, whom he adored so much and who had been giving him
such strange confidences: "admit that though I am not worth as much as
all these gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved," she
would perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed; at any rate
success would have entirely depended on the grace with which Julien had
expressed the idea, and on the moment which he had chosen to do so. In
any case he would have extricated himself well and advantageously from
a situation which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.
"And you love me no longer, me, who adores you!" said Julien to her one
day, overcome by love and unhappiness. This piece of folly was perhaps
the greatest which he could have committed. These words immediately
destroyed all the pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in
talking to him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be
surprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence at
what she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine at the very
moment when he made that foolish remark that perhaps he did not love
her any more. "His pride has doubtless extinguished his love," she was
saying to herself. "He is not the man to sit still and see people like
Caylus, de Luz, Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to
him. No, I shall never see him at my feet again."
Julien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during the previous
days praised sincerely the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he
would even go so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped
mademoiselle de la Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess
its reason. Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought
was loved, was sympathising with his happiness.
These frank but stupid words changed everything in a single moment;
confident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him utterly.
She was walking with him when he made his ill-timed remark; she left
him, and her parting look expressed the most awful contempt. She
returned to the salon and did not look at him again during the whole
evening. This contempt monopolised her mind the following day. The
impulse which during the last week had made her find so much pleasure
in treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the question;
the very sight of him was disagreeable. The sensation Mathilde felt
reached the point of disgust; nothing can express the extreme contempt
which she experienced when her eyes fell upon him.
Julien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's heart during
the last week, but he distinguished the contempt. He had the good sense
only to appear before her on the rarest possible occasions, and never
looked at her.
But it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were, deprived
himself of her presence. He thought he felt his unhappiness increasing
still further. "The courage of a man's heart cannot be carried
further," he said to himself. He passed his life seated at a little
window at the top of the hôtel; the blind was carefully closed, and
from here at any rate he could see mademoiselle de la Mole when she
appeared in the garden.
What were his emotions when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de
Caylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom she had confessed to him some
former amorous weakness!
Julien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense; he was on
the point of shouting out. This firm soul was at last completely
overwhelmed.
Thinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la Mole had become
odious to him; he became incapable of writing the simplest letters.
"You are mad," the marquis said to him.
Julien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked
about illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately for him
the marquis rallied him at dinner about his next journey; Mathilde
understood that it might be a very long one. It was now several days
that Julien had avoided her, and the brilliant young men who had all
that this pale sombre being she had once loved was lacking, had no
longer the power of drawing her out of her reverie.
"An ordinary girl," she said to herself, "would have sought out the man
she preferred among those young people who are the cynosure of a salon;
but one of the characteristics of genius is not to drive its thoughts
over the rut traced by the vulgar.
"Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who only lacks the
fortune that I possess, I should be continually exciting attention, I
should not pass through life unnoticed. Far from incessantly fearing
a revolution like my cousins who are so frightened of the people that
they have not the pluck to scold a postillion who drives them badly, I
should be certain of playing a rôle and a great rôle, for the man whom
I have chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does he
lack? Friends, money? I will give them him." But she treated Julien in
her thought as an inferior being whose love one could win whenever one
wanted.
CHAPTER XLIX
THE OPERA BOUFFE
How the spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away.--_Shakespeare_.
Engrossed by thoughts of her future and the singular rôle which
she hoped to play, Mathilde soon came to miss the dry metaphysical
conversations which she had often had with Julien. Fatigued by
these lofty thoughts she would sometimes also miss those moments of
happiness which she had found by his side; these last memories were not
unattended by remorse which at certain times even overwhelmed her.
"But one may have a weakness," she said to herself, "a girl like I am
should only forget herself for a man of real merit; they will not say
that it is his pretty moustache or his skill in horsemanship which have
fascinated me, but rather his deep discussions on the future of France
and his ideas on the analogy between the events which are going to
burst upon us and the English revolution of 1688."
"I have been seduced," she answered in her remorse. "I am a weak
woman, but at least I have not been led astray like a doll by exterior
advantages."
"If there is a revolution why should not Julien Sorel play the rôle of
Roland and I the rôle of Madame Roland? I prefer that part to Madame de
Stael's; the immorality of my conduct will constitute an obstacle in
this age of ours. I will certainly not let them reproach me with an act
of weakness; I should die of shame."
Mathilde's reveries were not all as grave, one must admit, as the
thoughts which we have just transcribed.
She would look at Julien and find a charming grace in his slightest
action.
"I have doubtless," she would say, "succeeded in destroying in him the
very faintest idea he had of any one else's rights."
"The air of unhappiness and deep passion with which the poor boy
declared his love to me eight days ago proves it; I must own it was
very extraordinary of me to manifest anger at words in which there
shone so much respect and so much of passion. Am I not his real wife?
Those words of his were quite natural, and I must admit, were really
very nice. Julien still continued to love me, even after those eternal
conversations in which I had only spoken to him (cruelly enough I
admit), about those weaknesses of love which the boredom of the life
I lead had inspired me for those young society men of whom he is so
jealous. Ah, if he only knew what little danger I have to fear from
them; how withered and stereotyped they seem to me in comparison with
him."
While indulging in these reflections Mathilde made a random pencil
sketch of a profile on a page of her album. One of the profiles she
had just finished surprised and delighted her. It had a striking
resemblance to Julien. "It is the voice of heaven. That's one of the
miracles of love," she cried ecstatically; "Without suspecting it, I
have drawn his portrait."
She fled to her room, shut herself up in it, and with much application
made strenuous endeavours to draw Julien's portrait, but she was unable
to succeed; the profile she had traced at random still remained the
most like him. Mathilde was delighted with it. She saw in it a palpable
proof of the grand passion.
She only left her album very late when the marquise had her called to
go to the Italian Opera. Her one idea was to catch sight of Julien, so
that she might get her mother to request him to keep them company.
He did not appear, and the ladies had only ordinary vulgar creatures in
their box. During the first act of the opera, Mathilde dreamt of the
man she loved with all the ecstasies of the most vivid passion; but a
love-maxim in the second act sung it must be owned to a melody worthy
of Cimarosa pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera said "You must